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The following experiments may inspire the creativity of citizen scientists who want to fly experiments in space. Performed aboard the International Space Station, they could easily be replicated aboard a suborbital flight. (We would like to remind everyone that our Call for Experiments is still open.)

In the first video, International Space Station science officer Don Petit uses an inexpensive speaker to demonstrate the effects of acoustical energy on water in a microgravity environment.

A variation on this experiment uses a different type of fluid, which does not behave in a classical “Newtonian” manner. In the following video, Don Petit uses a cornstarch mixture as an example of a non-Newtonian fluid.